For the seventh time, we put the year's hottest performance cars to the ultimate test.

The asphalt amoeba down at the ­bottom of Old Dominion, known as Virginia International Raceway (VIR), differs from the famed Nürburgring in Germany in several important respects. First, VIR is not bankrupt. Second, at 4.1 miles long, the configuration of VIR that we use for our annual Lightning Lap speed-a-palooza is considerably shorter than the Nordschleife, which is 12.9 miles around and has something like 18 trillion turns. Also, at the 'Ring you can't get Mountain Dew from a vending machine. No wonder business is bad.

Otherwise, VIR is North America's best facsimile of the famously formidable German speedway, which is why we come here to risk life, livelihoods, reputations, and other things breakable and precious to set benchmark lap times for the slickest new sheetmetal we can lay our greasy digits on. In this, our seventh Lightning Lap, we have gathered 20 vehicles ranging in price from a $26,600 Fiat 500 Abarth to a $379,575 Lexus LFA—indeed, the third LFA ever built and the first to reach North America. That means our Lightning Lap master database now encompasses 136 vehicles with not a sour apple in the bushel.

The event is simple in that finishing order is ranked purely on the best lap time for each vehicle over three days of testing. However, as in years past, the cars are grouped into classes based on price, which makes economic comparisons easier.

This year, while we had no entrants in LLT (trucks and SUVs) or LLU (unclassified), we added another special class. The source of its name, LLOINK, becomes groaningly obvious when you see the two contenders: the new Dodge Charger Pursuit and the new Chevrolet Caprice Police Patrol Vehicle (PPV). Attention, all esteemed law-enforcement professionals: We, the rest of the staff, were not allowed to vote on the class name, which is at least ­better than LL THE PO-PO TOOK ALL MY WEED AND SMOKED IT, which was one suggested alternative.

*Base price includes all performance-enhancing options. † 2012 model.bold = best in class

The Rules

Track-testing is serious business, so of course there were rules. As usual, the cars were all in unmodified street condition, just as your local Subaru or Ferrari dealership might deliver them. Where applicable, the cars were fitted with the highest performance options available to the buyer (or vomit-proof upholstery and shotgun racks, as the circumstances dictated).

Each morning we reset the tire pressures to the cold-inflation recommendations on the doorjamb stickers and topped off the fuel tanks. We recorded parameters such as ­vehicle speed, lateral g, and sector and overall times using a windshield-mounted, GPS-based Racelogic VBOX. Editors were assigned various cars, and at least two editors drove each car. It was left up to the individual how to extract the best time, but it usually involved running alternate cold and hot laps to keep the tire and brake temperatures in check, though some cars, such as the bawling Ferrari 458 Italia, were able to run multiple hot laps with no diminution in performance.

This year's competition was thick with big-bore cars. No fewer than 12 entries sported various iterations of the tried-and-true V-8. Head-to-head matchups included the Camaro ZL1 against the Shelby GT500, the BMW M5 versus the Audi S6, the ­Charger and Caprice coppers, and the ­Ferrari 458 and the Lexus LFA, two cars that ostensibly don't compete unless the Ferrari factory has, as in this case, piled on almost $100,000 in options. Bottle rockets such as the Abarth, the Subaru BRZ, and the Ford Focus ST breathed lots of life into the bottom price class.

We had to dodge some rain, but the sun returned and with our Arai buckets still reeking of that fresh, new-helmet smell, we motored down pit road in the service of ­science and the generation of pretty graphs. Some days, it just doesn't seem like work.